tremors of a coming change

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

~T. S. Eliot

I feel it in the bones of my soul. Straight to the marrow, it's burning -- something coming.

It's like pieces of a puzzle are beginning to fall into place -- not enough to discern the whole picture, perhaps, but a hazy construct of a picture. Things are beginning to make a little more sense.

For instance...over the past few years, God has not called me to a career. He never really has. All my life I've heard whispering in my blood, Change the world. Nothing more. (Nothing less, either.) All my subsequent stabs at ambition and employment have been attempts to figure out how.

I have felt a huge sense of shame in my lack of career drive. Since graduating from college, I've worked in childcare, retail, nonprofit, law; and now I have landed back in retail. I have never really wanted to go further than entry level in any of those fields, and, with all of my friends pursuing academic or professional careers, or settling into steady, important jobs, I have metaphorically tucked my head into my chest and wondered what was wrong with me, that nothing I could think of doing sounded right. Temporality suited me, and bothered me because it suited me, because, above and over and underneath each little crap-paying job the conviction ran like liquid fire through my veins: the call to greatness. The call to something really, really big. I knew it, believed it, and couldn't place it among the completely unprestigious jobs I worked that have never required much of my intellect or gifts.

All I've had to go on has been the call. It comes in various forms at various times and places. Senior year of college, tired of school and casting about for a future, I heard only, Go west. This autumn, exhausted and depressed and desperate, I heard only, Go home. As with my move to South Bend four years ago, so now I know about my return to Erie: temporary, brief: a season. I have something to do here; but in the end, I won't stay. The call will come again.

It wakes me up sometimes. I don't remember when it began, but at some point, just on the verge of waking in the mornings, I started hearing my name. (Apparently nearly everybody hears things from time to time and most people won't admit it, so don't chalk me up to schizophrenia just yet.) Quietly, sometimes once, sometimes twice: Sarah. Sarah. I wake up with a jolt and wonder what it is I'm supposed to do. I heard it the other morning. I'm usually too sleep-stupid to respond as I'd like: Here I am, Lord. But it keeps me alert.

Whatever it is, it's coming. And I think I'm beginning to catch flashes of it. I'm getting a clue. It has to do with the young singles in all the churches in my hometown -- with bringing everyone together in a way that encompasses theological difference and still embraces community-wide unity in the faith. I've blogged about that a little bit before. But here's the crazy part: The groundwork is already laid. I learned from J. the other night that our town has a Clergy Council which represents nearly every church in the community; the reverends/pastors/priests/etc. meet once a month. There's also a Youth Services Council comprised of the heads of the community's church youth groups. My friend L. has a vision of bringing together all the singles in the area to interact, socialize, and study Scripture, and she's a mover and shaker; I have a vision of bringing together all the singles in the area for service projects. (As I said in Sunday school this week, "The church needs to harness the raw power of the singles. We have no real obligations beyond our jobs, and we have a ton of repressed sexual energy that could be channeled to impact communities for the love of God.") We can totally combine all three. Further, the local youth center holds a gathering for college-aged (18-35) "kids" every Thursday night...great venue to begin.

L. and I are meeting this week to put our heads together and start hashing out details. (I'm not oblivious to the problems -- for example, an all-denominations-welcome Bible study has to incorporate some kind of check system to dissolve the inevitable doctrinal arguments that will arise so that it doesn't turn into a war and ruin both the active love between believers and the curiosity of people new to Christianity.) I'd like to come up with a solid proposal, a vision and a plan, to present to the Clergy Council at their next meeting. From there we can gather contacts and get in touch with the right people at each church and start getting these hilltop beacons lit.

My conviction keeps growing that each church's tendency to define "the body of Christ" as the members of its own congregation is erroneous; in any community, the body of Christ is all the churches working together. It has to be. I want to find out how they already do. I want to find out each church's special ministry. I want to get a feel for what each church does, and how each church functions. I want all the young people, all the Gen-X and Gen-Y-ers, to start coming together to tear down the Berlin Walls that separate church from church in our hometown, and start impacting the community with the unconditional, ever-present love of God for every man, woman and child within it. I want to see all of us come together in our universal brokenness and learn how to be loved, and to love. I want to see the real, and not the make-believe. I want unity to be gritty, stubborn, honest, authentic. I want us to live in the total freedom of God's total love.

"Changes, come...Jesus, come..."

I don't know how exactly all of this is going to be accomplished. I haven't been told. I'm only one person. I'm not perfect, I'm not strong, I don't have it all together; but nobody is and nobody does, and that's where big things start to happen, and it usually starts small. And since this is the season where we observe and celebrate the small beginnings of the big -- a slippery human infant lying in a crust of livestock feed, the rescue of the world -- I believe there is no better time than now. (Now is the day of salvation...)

I think perhaps all of this is part of why I have no burning career ambitions. I don't know for sure. But I have a work to do, just my small part, and I don't know where it's headed or how it will turn out, but for right here, right now, in this particle of space-time, this is what I'm meant to do, and low-wage part-time jobs with flexible hours will suit this kind of work. It's time.

Universe, because the Yes is welling up like living fire, because I keep hearing my name, because the changes are coming and the foundations are laid, because I am being pushed, drawn; because of my brokenness, because I'm a train wreck, because I'm small and weak and poor and screwed up and afraid, because I am deeply loved in all of my wreckage, because I am redeemed and learning that redemption means not perfection but learning to hold a bigger hand; despite the backlash, the inevitable failures, the clash of Christian with Christian, despite the difficulties and the obstacles and the wrong kinds of stubbornness; and always, always because of Love...

Universe, I dare.